Weekly Wrapup: Change.gov, GoogleBomb, Microsoft Layoffs, & Few More

Coming week will be hectic since got some holiday plans. So to wrap up last week’s events, here I go again. Here are the weekly wrapup post from 18th-24th January, 2009 in whatever has happened in Web, technology and few more interesting stuff.

1. Microsoft to cut up to 5,000 jobs – Microsoft has said it will cut up to 5,000 jobs over the next 18 months, including 1,400 immediately via BBC News. Many say that Vista may be the reason for these layoffs.

3. Google announces results: “Google performed well in the fourth quarter, despite an increasingly difficult economic environment. Search query growth was strong, revenues were up in most verticals, and we successfully contained costs,” said Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google.” via Google Investor Relations

4. Online advertising prices take a hit – Ad network CPMs were down in Q4 2008 compared with Q4 2007, according to PubMatic. Prices for ads on Websites of all sizes had decreased; small, medium and large sites’ ad prices dropped 52%, 23% and 54%, respectively, from the previous year. via eMarketer

5. Change.gov coming to the White House – whitehouse.gov – The website for the past eight years of President George W. Bush changes hands and the savvy young New Media webmasters of freshly sworn-in President Barack Obama take over.

The new whitehouse.gov is expected to be the window for what is being touted as a bold experiment in interactive government based largely on lessons learned during the most successful Internet-driven election campaign in history via AFP

7. Google drops traditional print ads program – Google announced that they will be closing down their Print Ads initiative. Google will no longer take new ads of February 28th and will close down the whole product offering on March 31st. Google said they are discontinuing this service because “the current Print Ads product is not the right solution.” via Google-tmads

8. Facebook outpaces MySpace in terms of UV’s worldwide – In November 2008 Facebook drew 200 million unique worldwide visitors; more than 1 in 5 people who accessed the Internet that month visited the site. When sites are that big growth generally stagnates, but in Facebook’s case it’s still skyrocketing. In December, 222 million people visited the site says newly released Comscore stats, a 10.8% month over month growth rate. 22% of the total Internet audience went to Facebook in December. via TC